Voters are not happy about President Trump’s war in Iran — and the polls are starting to show it. The Conversation convenes this week with the contributing writer and Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, the contributing writer E.J. Dionne Jr. and the former “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel to unpack the war and what it could mean for gas prices and the midterm elections.
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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Robert Siegel: We begin, inevitably, with the war, which President Trump has made a peculiar practice of calling an “excursion.” We’re talking on Wednesday. It’s now been almost two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched a series of strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets.
A series of oil refineries have been hit. It was a tragic strike on an Iranian elementary school. And Iran has attacked more than 17 U.S. sites all across the Middle East. And we’ll get to what this means for American voters in a moment. But first, E.J., what do you make of what’s happening?
E.J. Dionne Jr.: Well, I think from the very beginning of this war, we got a sense that there wasn’t a great deal of serious thought put into it by the president of the United States about how it might end, what our objectives were, what needed to be done to protect Americans who are in the Middle East, what might happen to oil in the Strait of Hormuz. All you have to do is look at a little map and see how dangerous it is, that little space there, where all this oil has to get out of.
He sent this message, by announcing the war, not in his speech to the American people from the White House, but in a video released in the early hours of the morning, wearing a baseball hat. And maybe I’m old-fashioned, but that did not look terribly presidential to me. It looked like he was rooting for a side in a video game.
And I think what we’ve seen since is a problem in explaining why we were at war. And so, I think that even among the minority of Americans, who supported this war going in — and you’re noticing some of this in the commentary — there are grave doubts about what the president is doing here. And no matter how many times Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeats the word “lethality,” that is just not a strategy for ending the war in a way that would be in the American interest.
Siegel: This war was not really a surprise. The U.S. made no bones about moving two carrier groups to the region to be within range of Iranian targets. But apart from signaling a willingness to attack, as you’ve said, there never was that speech explaining why this was necessary or important to do.
Kristen, given that lack of that particular kind of effort, how are Americans reacting to Trump’s war?
Kristen Soltis Anderson: Well, in the absence of a clear case for why we have entered into this conflict, people’s attitudes about it really are just reflective of, do you generally trust Donald Trump or not?
Do you like Donald Trump or not? And so, things like approval of the war tend to track pretty closely with things like Donald Trump’s overall job approval figures. This week, we had — I believe Quinnipiac University came out with some of their numbers, showing that the president’s job approval is both not great, but also not significantly lower than it was, say, a month ago.
And I think that’s where the White House has sort of run into a challenge of its own making on this, in that there are some justifications for military engagement in Iran that do get better numbers than just, “How do you feel about Donald Trump today?” The American public is very eager that Iran not be able to have nuclear capabilities, and so on and so forth.
But in the absence of evidence, or a compelling case being made that this is the reason we’ve done this, people have sort of defaulted to, “Do I trust Donald Trump or not?” And, problematically for the White House right now, that means that you are starting with approval for this war that is lower than approval for almost any conflict that the United States has entered into in recent decades.
Dionne: I think that’s right, and I think it’s very important that Trump went into this war unpopular, so that the base line for support of the war, at best, is low. And that some of the cases that they might have made, like this will get rid of their nuclear threat, it’s almost certain that they can’t completely get rid of the nuclear threat with a war.
And so many of the other rationales just don’t wash with people. So, the result is, looking at a group of numbers, there’s less support for this than even the intervention in Libya, which was never particularly popular. It’s well below Afghanistan, below Iraq — below almost any other intervention that we have made. And it’s because the American people just have not heard a great case for why we should go to war and why we should be spending a billion dollars a day.
I think that number has really caught on with people, and people are asking themselves: “Well, what else could we do with a billion dollars a day?” Say, for health care or housing or the things that people were worried about the day before this war started.
Siegel: Yeah. I’m curious, Kristen, though — I understand that people who consider themselves supporters of President Trump will answer in the affirmative, but what about people who were independents, but voted for Donald Trump. Not MAGA members, but vote Republican. Do they feel the same way about it?
Soltis Anderson: Well, independent voters, I often find in my data, are among the most isolationist group of voters that you have. On the one hand, Democrats nowadays are a little bit more open to the idea of American projection of power around the world — at least when it is somebody that they trust at the helm, I should add. You saw Democrats consistently ahead of Republicans in terms of providing support to Ukraine in its fight against Vladimir Putin. And then, for Republicans, there’s a lot of really old, baked-in DNA there from the Cold War, of: America is good, America is strong. American power around the world is a positive thing. You saw a lot of this, in very bold form, during the George W. Bush administration and the global war on terror — that the world is better off when America’s projecting power.
And even though you’ve had this isolationist strain really take root and grow within the Republican Party in recent years, it is still the majority view that I find in my data — Republicans feeling like, “Yes, let’s use American power around the world.”
But there is a bit of a generational divide, and some of these younger independents that Donald Trump brought to vote for him — if not brought to the Republican Party itself — are among those voters who, I think, are looking the most skeptically at this and wondering to what extent this is something that is in their interest. They did not grow up in a world where they’ve seen American projection of power around the world turning into something that they feel benefited them directly or greatly. And that’s one of the political risks of this.
Siegel: You mean their world — it’s been Afghanistan and Iraq is what it’s been. I would just add that there doesn’t appear to be much discussion of an invasion of Iran. Or large use of ground troops, maybe special operations forces to locate enriched uranium and seize it from the Iranians.
But Trump’s insistence that he should be involved in picking the person who leads Iran suggests imperial designs without imperial conquest. Can you run Iran from offshore?
Dionne: He did it in Venezuela, he thinks. And so, the Venezuelan model has left, in his head, the idea that presto, he can in this case just kidnap a leader or grab a leader, put him on trial here, and get a person in power who will do business with him.
Just to build on one point that Kristen made, it really shows how unpopular this war is, because it’s hard to think of a regime that is less popular in the United States than in the Iranian regime. For older people, they remember the hostage crisis under Jimmy Carter.
For everybody, they remember the brutality of this regime in putting down a democratic opposition and protest. So, there’s no sympathy for the Iranian leadership here. And yet, Americans in exceptionally large numbers are still asking: “Why are we carrying out this war?” And I sometimes think about the president as believing that he can make almost any case he wants, and change day by day — it’s like he’s running a focus group, “That didn’t work yesterday, so let’s try this.” Selling a war is not like selling Trump University or Trump Steaks. Selling war is a very serious business, and he just has not gone about it in a very serious way.
Siegel: Well, one thing that has resulted from the war is an increase in oil prices. And even before the war began, the cost of energy was emerging as a very important cost of living issue. This from a president who ran, virtually, with the price of gasoline at the pump as the measure of his effectiveness as president.
Kristen, what do we know about how voters see the two parties when it comes to dealing with the cost of energy? And how might the war affect that further?
Soltis Anderson: Well, when you ask voters which party they trust more on the overall question of cost of living, much to Republican chagrin, it’s become a more even fight than it was certainly a year, or definitely two years ago. But when you break it out by different categories — like “Which party do you trust more on an issue like health care?” — the Democrats tend to be much more trusted to bring down the cost of health care.
When you ask, “Whom do you trust more to bring down the cost of education?” — the Democrats are much more trusted. But on energy and gas prices, that is one area where voters have tended to trust Republicans more. They look at Republican policies to expand domestic production of energy. And they say: “Look, I think that if somebody’s going to make my price at the pump cheaper, it’s going to be the Republicans. I think if somebody’s going to make my power bill cheaper, it’s going to be the Republicans.”
And so, for Republicans to preside over a moment where suddenly that’s no longer the case, that really complicates what was one of their best issues within this broader bucket of cost of living. And there’s a real short-term versus long-term challenge that the Trump administration is going to face in trying to sell the benefits of why we’ve done what we’ve done.
They may say that over the long term, our world is safer if we no longer have this regime in Iran: “Look, all of our friends and allies in the Gulf have come to our side, come to join us in pushing back against what Iran is doing. The world will be safer. World energy markets will be more stable if we can achieve what we want to achieve.”
But in the short term, you’re going to have attacks on American military assets in the Middle East. You could have attacks here within the United States if sleeper cells get activated. And then, on the energy issue, you are likely to see effects at the pump. And so, this short-term pain for a promise of some vague long-term gain is never a political dynamic that works out well for anybody.
Siegel: E.J.?
Dionne: It is remarkable, the president’s capacity to throw away the potential he had going in. He had a real possibility of building a new coalition when you saw the shifts. It didn’t happen in 2024. That was a close election.
But there were these gains among younger people, particularly not young women, but young men. There were gains among Latinos. And a lot of it was over prices, the economy, and who will stand up for my economic benefit. Whether you agreed with that or not, you could understand. It’s easy to forget that right before the pandemic, in January 2020 — I looked this up recently — Trump had a 49 percent approval rating overall, but he had a 63 percent approval rating on the economy. So many, many Americans had good memories of Trump. They said the pandemic was caused by a virus, not Trump. Boy, that was pretty good.
Low unemployment, low prices, low interest rates, rising wages — all of that has been thrown away. Our colleague, Jamelle Bouie, I thought had a great column about the alternative presidency of Donald Trump, where essentially he has Trump One, not Trump Two. And he doesn’t do quite so many wild things.
I think he was elected to beat Trump One, and all the people who voted for Trump One are unhappy about prices, unhappy about the effects of the war on prices, and just sort of take a look at the news and say: “Why is he acting this way when he used to act that way?”
Soltis Anderson: Let me push back a little bit on the idea that Americans voted for Donald Trump because they wanted Trump One.
I do think that his message in running for re-election in 2024 did suggest a bold “let’s throw off the restraints” kind of approach. I don’t think that he hid the ball on that at all. And I do think that there was an extent to which voters said: “It feels like the control room has been empty for the last four years. I might like Donald Trump back in there.”
And frankly, Donald Trump, unplugged, might be exactly what America needs. But very quickly, we’re sort of disabused of that notion, when you had tariffs go into place that were immediately pretty unpopular. A lot of market turmoil around that. And just a variety of issues like that where people went: Oh. I wanted the border to be more secure. But gosh, you’re deporting people from the parking lot of my local Home Depot. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted fair trade deals. But gosh, it seems like the market’s gotten a little bit chaotic and I’m a little worried about what this means. And that’s where I think things ran into trouble.
And energy is one of those issues where Donald Trump has consistently said: I want to be bold, I want to be aggressive. Drill, baby drill. We’re going to have energy independence. But when a war in the Middle East is dramatically affecting your price at the pump, it sort of betrays just how independent we truly are.
It may feed into a narrative that we need greater American energy independence, but at least in the short run, people’s wallets have a big influence over how they think and how they vote.
Dionne: Just a couple of things in response to that. First, this war shows why the idea of having more alternative energy is a good idea, because if you get rid of wind, which the president seems to want to do — he seems to hate wind for some reason — if you get rid of solar, we are more, not less dependent on oil. So that’s, I think, a policy problem that you’re going to hear a lot about from people saying: Why did we walk away from alternative energy? But I do think Trump hid the ball a lot, for a lot of voters. Yes, to his base he said some things, like how he’s going to fight the 2020 election forever.
But when he was asked about Project 2025, and all the ideas in Project 2025, he said: Who, me? What is Project 2025? I know nothing about that. And then lo and behold, he gets elected and Russell Vought is one of his top people in the White House over at the Office of Management and Budget, and Project 2025 is the model.
Again, some of us did expect what you said, which is why we were worried about this man being elected again. But I think an awful lot of voters — that was to reassure them that it won’t be so bad. “I won’t be so radical.” And they voted for him. And they got the radical.
Siegel: But when you include in that description of Trump Two, the candidate — when you say he disputed the 2020 election, I mean, it was pretty clear what he thought about the presidency.
Dionne: Well, I think there are two questions here. Do I think it was very high risk to elect Trump? Yes. Do I wish that people had looked back and said, “Wait a minute, look what he did” at that moment? Yeah, of course I do. And that’s why I think that when the election came around, there was sufficient frustration in the country that sort of began — Joe Biden, whose presidency I still think deserves more credit, and I think it’ll get more credit over time, after the Afghanistan withdrawal, his numbers never recovered. After, as soon as he might’ve recovered that, the inflation went up by June of the next year to around 9 percent. And his numbers were flat all the way to the end of the administration. He had to withdraw. Kamala Harris had to jump in at the last minute, so a lot of Americans said: We just want to go back to this other thing.
Because it kind of, sort of worked better, and a lot of voters vote on that basis. And that’s OK with me. I think that voters have a right to compare what they got, what they thought they had, and make their choice. In the end, I think this is not what they voted for.
Siegel: There was a special election this week, in the very conservative Georgia House district that was represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned. And the Democrats running in — that’s “jungle primaries,” both Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians all ran. And the one who came in first, didn’t quite make 50 percent, was the Democrat in the race.
Still had a couple more points this time than the last time he challenged Marjorie Taylor Greene in the same district. So, Democrats still have reason to feel some enthusiasm for them out there, even in very conservative places.
So what do you say, Kristen, to Democrats who sense something? They sense enthusiasm, excitement, a bunch of young, new candidates, and think: I think we can take Texas?
Soltis Anderson: I’ve heard that before, but there’s always a first time. I guess it’s not a first time. There was a time, a point in time, even in my lifetime, where Texas was occasionally voting for Democrats statewide. So I joke a bit, but look, this is going to be a good year for the Democrats. I think it remains an open question just how good. So, let’s take something like the Texas race where you had ——
Siegel: Senator John Cornyn.
Soltis Anderson: Right, Senator Cornyn is the incumbent. We had the primary somewhat recently on the Democratic side. You have James Talarico emerging as the Democratic candidate. It is still an open question who the Republican candidate will be, and whether President Trump will endorse in this race.
But I think back to 2018. That was the last time that there was a real strong contention for who would be the senator from Texas, where it got close. And in that race, you had Beto O’Rourke coming within about three points, I believe, of Senator Ted Cruz at the time. But recall that 2018 was a blue wave year.
It was a very good environment for Democrats. It was where you had the initial backlash to Trump, the #Resistance movement. You had a lot of Democratic voters very fired up to push back against what they saw was an administration in Washington that needed standing up to. And in that race, so I would then ask, if you’re looking at something like Texas, I believe you would need three things to fall into place for it to be that extreme, that Democrats could win Texas.
One is whether the environment is better than in 2018? I’m not yet convinced that it ——
Siegel: The political environment.
Soltis Anderson: The political environment for Democrats. It is certainly the case that in all of my data I see Democrats are much more enthusiastic and motivated to vote than Republicans are. The reality is voters don’t turn out to say thank you. They turn out to say they’re mad as hell.
And right now, Democrats are mad as hell. You also have candidate quality. And so, is the Democratic candidate in that race, James Talarico — is he better than Beto O’Rourke was as a statewide candidate in 2018? I’m not yet convinced of that. And is the Republican candidate going to be a worse candidate statewide than Ted Cruz? I think it remains to be seen who emerges from this primary on the G.O.P. side. So, there are a lot of variables, both in terms of the overall environment and then at an individual level, who the candidates are, in these different races that are going to affect whether Democrats can take the Senate in November.
Dionne: I appreciate Kristen’s loyalty to data, which teaches humility. And it is March and we’re talking about November. So, that should be stated right upfront. I think that what you’re seeing in the enthusiasm gap that she mentioned is very, very important. It’s a particularly large enthusiasm gap, if measured by determination to vote and comparing the numbers of who strongly approves and who strongly disapproves of Trump.
What’s really striking is there’s sometimes a big gap between strong approvers and strong disapprovers, with the disapprovers being much bigger.
So, in that sense, I think that it is very possible that if you compare 2018 to now, this could be more dangerous for Republicans than 2018 was. When it comes to Texas, first of all, I think Talarico is a fascinating candidate — because he’s doing something I personally believe should have been done a long time ago. He’s a religious Christian candidate who is making an argument about what it means to be a Christian.
And he is arguing not just that Christians should be compassionate toward the poor and in favor of lifting people up economically and being for the outcast, which is standard, but he’s also saying this should affect the way we treat each other.
And I think what’s fascinating about his victory speech is that it combined a really fierce attack on Trump and the Republicans with the idea that, aren’t we tired of being divided in our families over politics? Aren’t we tired of not being able to talk to each other? David French, our colleague, wrote very thoughtfully about this.
I think there is something really interesting about the kind of campaign Talarico is running. Just to jump more generally, it would have to be a very large turnaround from now — I’m curious if Kristen agrees — for the Republicans to hold on to the House of Representatives. If the numbers in November are anything like they are now — looking at the enormous success of Democrats in virtually every special election we have seen since the beginning of 2025, huge — about a 13-point swing on average to Democrats. This spells real trouble for Republicans. No, Kristen?
Soltis Anderson: It’s certainly a tough place to be, and it’s especially tough given that, right now, Republicans hold the majority. And yet, that majority is already so thin that through illnesses and unexpected deaths and scandals and goodness knows what, that majority is already somewhat imperiled on a day-to-day basis — and we’re not even at November yet. And so, to say that Democrats could pick up the House is not necessarily going out on too far of a limb. Saying the Democrats could pick up the Senate does feel a little premature to me, and not yet supported by the data.
Siegel: As they campaign to win back the House, and maybe do well in the Senate, do Democrats have the ability to win back blue-collar voters, whom they’ve been hemorrhaging in recent cycles to the Republicans?
Dionne: I think that is the important question to ask for now and for the long term. If there’s anything that the left of the party and the center of the party agree on, it’s that they need to win back a larger share of blue-collar voters.
They don’t need — or another way to put it — a large share of the part of the electorate that does not have a college degree. They tend to fight a little bit over how to do it, although I think they’re kind of approaching a consensus. What you’re seeing right now is a consensus that you can be open on social issues. The country doesn’t like the mistreatment of immigrants, especially citizens by ICE. So, there’s some room there.
Every Democrat agrees: Let’s talk about prices, let’s talk about health care, let’s talk about housing. And if this is — if I may go way back — a Harry S. Truman-style kitchen table campaign that can bring together these arguments of the center and of the left.
And I think that’s what Democrats are groping toward.
Siegel: Kristen, is the Democrats’ problem with these voters, whom they’d like to see return to the Democratic Party, basically cultural issues, or is it bread-and-butter issues?
Soltis Anderson: I think it’s a little bit of both. We talked about Talarico and this race in Texas. Let’s be clear: There are going to be an unbelievable number of ads aired on television in Texas that highlight pieces from his various sermons, where he has said things that are certainly outside of the mainstream, and are certainly to the left of where the median Texas voter is.
And even if said in the context of a sermon in a church, it is going to be something that Republicans will be all too happy to highlight. I would not understate the importance of that. But when we think about the bread-and-butter issues, I think a big weakness that Democrats have is they can say: Affordability is our new buzzword. It’s our new watchword. We’re going to talk about affordability all of the time.
But I think the question is: What are you going to do about it? And if the answer is: We’re going to subsidize X, Y and Z more. That’s our policy plan. Well, to what extent is that different from the spending that we saw during the Biden presidency, that kind of fueled some of this inflation?
And so, I do think that Republicans benefit from the fact that they are running against a Democratic Party that knows the words to mouth, but haven’t yet said: Here’s what our agenda is, that would actually bring your prices down. They know it’s the issue to talk about, but they’re not quite sure exactly what it is that they would do about it, or how to communicate that to voters.
Whereas the Republicans can say: We are cutting your taxes in one big, beautiful bill. And if people get their tax returns back in April, and that’s true, they’ll be able to point to that. They used to be able to say: We’re bringing your gas prices down.
But, of course, we know that they’ve now lost that talking point, at least in the short term. But that’s where I think Democrats have a weakness: They can pantomime that they care about affordability, but what’s their plan to actually make things cheaper? Besides saying, “I’m not Donald Trump.”
I think that’s still a vulnerability they have.
EJ Dionne: I just want to say, if you use the word subsidy, people say, “I don’t like subsidies.”
If you say, “the government should help me afford health care, which is unaffordable without those subsidies,” it is very popular. And the cuts Republicans made in health care are very unpopular. The cuts they made in food stamps are unpopular, and a lot of these programs benefit core Republican areas.
And the tax bill — you remember back when they passed the tax cut in 2018, it was unpopular. Why? Because most Americans don’t like big tax cuts for the rich. Why? Because most of us aren’t rich. And so I think there’s a much more problematic path on those issues for the Republicans, but we’ll see how it plays out.
Siegel: Well, we’ve made a practice here — after we’ve talked about wars, and taxes, and profound political divisions — of thinking a little bit about joy and what it is in our lives that has brought a little bit of joy to us in recent days, weeks, months, whatever. E.J., it’s your turn.
Dionne: First, it’s a joy to be back with Kristen and to talk in this format with Kristen. I love talking politics with her. Two sources of joy: One is that we learned earlier this year that our son James is engaged to his girlfriend, Kate Applegate, whom we love. She has been part of our family already and now it will become formal. That’s a real source of joy.
The other is a sports one: I love that Jayson Tatum is back playing basketball for my dear Boston Celtics. And it’s a heroic story, not just because he’s a great basketball player and improves the Celtics’ chances of winning, but because he tore his Achilles’ tendon, and no one expected him to be back at this point, in 298 days. And the determination he showed should inspire anybody who ever went through rehab of any kind. And the smile he had. I have never seen a sports player do an interview with just such a deep smile of happiness, because he liked being back and he liked being back with his teammates. And isn’t that why we like to watch sports?
Siegel: I think so. Kristen?
Soltis Anderson: Mine is a sports one as well. I’m a very big motorsports fan — love IndyCar. And it was recently announced that Washington, D.C., would become host to an IndyCar race as part of the broader America 250 celebrations.
And this week the track map was announced, showing that there were going to be cars going at an enormous rate of speed around the National Archives, in front of the Capitol. I understand that there are some sort of partisan feelings around a lot of these America 250 celebrations — to what extent it’s the celebration of the president versus our country — but my hope is that we can all unify around fast cars. Fast cars are really cool.
Siegel: Are they crossing the river at all into Virginia?
Soltis Anderson: No, it’s actually a fairly short track. And I’ll be very interested to see, from a technical perspective, how the drivers prepare for this. They’ll have no simulation ability. They’ve not raced this track before, because it really didn’t exist until about a week ago when the wrap was announced.
But it will be a spectacle, that’s for sure.
Dionne: A Republican pollster loving fast cars would focus group very well.
Soltis Anderson: Are you trying to talk me into running for something, E.J.?
Dionne: That would be great. The Republican Party could use somebody like you.
Siegel: Well, my surprising source of joy is a book by David Margolick, “When Caesar Was King.” This is not about ancient Rome, it’s about Sid Caesar, the greatest comedian on our early television. And it’s about the writers who worked with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner and Larry Gelbart. And it’s about the borscht belt, and what Caesar ate. It’s a wonderful story and I’ve been enjoying it, terrifically.
E.J., Kristen, it’s been a joy having both of you. Nice to see you again and we’ll see you soon, I hope.
Soltis Anderson: Thank you so much. This has been a treat.
Dionne: Yes. Thank you, Robert.
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This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouruad. Video editing by Ted Hayden. The postproduction manager is Mike Puretz. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Video is Jonah M. Kessel. The deputy director of Opinion Shows is Alison Bruzek. The director of Opinion Shows is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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